PreWedding Jitters
by Lunar Maelstrom
Summary: The night before his wedding, Kukai found himself wondering if marrying the blonde, pigtailed spitfire of his fiancee was the right thing to do. Somehow he ends up receiving relationship advice from the last place he expected, or wanted, it from.


**A/N:** I don't know why, but I seem to be fascinated with weddings and marriages and stuff at the moment, because I've got several other ideas for short fics that revolve around that kind of thing. This just hit me like lightning without warning while I was staring at the ceiling. Enjoy.

**Summary: **The night before his wedding, Kukai finds himself wondering, with the help of alcohol, if marrying the blonde, pigtailed spitfire of his fiancee was the right thing to do. Somehow he ends up receiving relationship advice from the last place he expected, or even wanted, it from.

**Disclaimer:** I do not own Shugo Chara! or these characters, but this scene is all mine.

~*~

**Pre-Wedding Jitters**

Kukai stared morosely into the mug of beer. He was getting married tomorrow. There was a tuxedo somewhere in his house, taunting him about it. He'd had his bachelor party weeks ago while Utau was fretting over the layout of the reception tables or the food or how the flowers were arranged... she wanted everything to be perfect. This was the main thing that was worrying the groom.

What if he wasn't perfect enough? What if he didn't measure up? He didn't know if he could take it if Utau suddenly realizes that he wasn't what she wanted before suddenly leaving him. After all, she was this beautiful, famous, rich and renowned singer and ex-model. She'd been stunning back when she was fourteen and in the middle of puberty, only getting better with age. She could pick almost anybody in the world to be her partner and they would happily accept. What was he? Granted, he was now a sporting star, but this meant that he would always be practising for the next game. Utau deserved better than some dumb jock with a lot of money.

A chill ran down his spine. What if she was only with him because of his money? Or worse, because she pitied him? He frowned as he stared into his cup. It was empty and he didn't remember drinking it. Somebody stole his beer! He eyed the bartender in drunken suspicion.

"Hey, did you steal my beer?" slurred Kukai.

The bartender, used to handling drunks, just took the cup and filled it again.

He grinned at the sight of the filled mug. "Hey! Cheers! You're a good guy, y'know that? A good guy..." His face fell again suddenly. "Hey, did you know that I'm getting married tomorrow?"

In fact he had. Four times already. The bartender, a patient man, just grunted.

"Beautiful woman. Love of my life. Woman of my dreams," he elaborated. The bartender rolled his eyes and grunted wearily.

"It's good to know that you love her, otherwise I'd have had to punch you," somebody drawled from behind him. Kukai tried to turn around in his chair but ended up tripping over. Luckily for him, the newcomer caught his arm before he could seriously injure himself.

The red-head blinked fuzzily at the newcomer. Now, who did he know that had blue hair and purple eyes - eyes that were the exact same colour as Utau's?

"Hey! Tsukiyomi!" he called out in a drunkenly cheerful voice.

"I'd have thought that you'd be happy the night before your wedding," he commented. "Utau's in a frenzy looking for you." In actual fact, she'd threatened that she would show his baby photos to Rima if he didn't haul his butt out to find where her missing fiancee had disappeared to.

"Wedding. Right." Kukai looked sombrely at his once again empty mug. "Refill!" he demanded. Ikuto just shook his head at the bartender, slapped a few notes down on the table to pay for everything and tip generously before starting to haul Kukai outside.

The crisp night air helped to clear some of the alcohol-induced fog in the groom's head. Ikuto passed him a bottle of water, silently ordering him to drink. "What're you so worried about?" he asked quietly.

"That she'll find I'm not perfect like she wants me to be," said Kukai. He'd had lots of practice explaining that already. "That years down the road, she'll feel trapped and leave me. That she finds someone better than me."

Ikuto stopped walking and, since he was supporting some of Kukai's weight, so did Kukai. "Where'd you get that idea?" he asked incredulously.

Kukai shrugged. "'Cause she wants the wedding to be perfect, and she's perfect, and I'm not perfect... I think she'll wake up one day and realize she deserves better."

"'Better'," snorted Ikuto. "Are you some kind of idiot, Souma?"

"Huh?" Kukai frowned puzzledly.

Ikuto sighed, shaking his head in disbelief. "She wants the wedding perfect because of you," he explained. Kukai just stared at him blankly. Usually, Ikuto would have left somebody to figure it out for themselves but with the wedding tomorrow, that would just be inviting disaster.

He set the soccer-player down on a bench before relaxing next to him and looking up at the stars dotting the sky. The moon was over half full. Very few people paid much attention to the moon when it was like this, or knew that it was called a gibbous moon. Ikuto was one of the few people that did. They stayed there in silence, wrapped in their own thoughts.

"What do you mean, 'because of me'?" asked Kukai finally.

Ikuto remained thoughtful for a few more minutes. "Maybe I phrased it wrong?" he mused. "_For_ you may have been a better way to put it."

"Yeah, but what did you _mean_?" he persisted.

Ikuto was tempted to make fun of his intelligence but restrained himself. This involved the rest of Utau's life and future happiness. "Because she loves you."

"But I'm not..." Kukai ran a hand through his hair, frustrated.

"Definitely a grade one idiot." He hadn't been able to resist that jibe. Before Kukai could say anything in response, Ikuto continued on. "She loves you because you're perfect _for her_," he said. "She's putting all that effort into the wedding to signify how much you mean to her. It's the start of a perfect love, so it should very well be perfect. You can really see Eru in her during times like these," he added thoughtfully.

Kukai gaped at him, stunned. Utau thought that he was perfect for her? She was organizing the wedding to show him that? The perfection was for... _them_. He finally understood why Utau refused to just hire somebody to sort everything out for her. She had insisted that she do it herself. At the time, he thought that she didn't trust anybody else to do a decent job...

Why did women have to be so darn _complicated_?

"You make her happy," said Ikuto. "If you ever leave her or hurt her, trust me; I will hunt you down."

"Believe me; I won't," he said firmly.

"Good, because -" Ikuto's phone started to ring, interrupting him. He checked the caller ID before answering it.

"Utau," he said coolly. "Yeah I've got him." _Pause_. "He's fine." _Pause_. "At a bar." Ikuto winced at the volume of Utau's raised voice over the phone. "Okay, fine. Utau wants to speak to you." The last sentence was directed at Kukai. Gingerly, as if expecting it to explode at any given moment, he took the phone and held it to his ear.

"Hello?" he asked quietly.

"_You were at a _bar?!" was the furious reply.

"Um..." Kukai shifted guiltily in his seat.

"_The night before our wedding, you were in a _bar?!"

"Well..."

"_You don't call or text or leave a note and scare me half to death so that you could go to a _bar?! _Yukari thought that you did a runner! She was ready to kill you! _I'm_ ready to kill you!_"

"Did you think I did a runner?" asked Kukai worriedly. He never meant for her to think that. He didn't want her to think that he doubted his love for her or anything. If he had ruined their relationship the night before their wedding, he would never forgive himself.

There was a moment's pause at the other end of the line. "..._No. I know you. But couldn't you have at least left a little note somewhere saying 'I'm still alive, don't worry' or something? You selfish pig!_"

"I..." he tried to protest but couldn't get much of a word in.

"_Don't you even have the common decency to invite me to join you?_"

"Well I... wait, _what_?" Kukai was seriously confused.

"_If you're going to drown your uncertainties, why don't you tell me next time so I can either join you in drinking or at least make sure you get home okay? I would've joined in tonight. Planning this wedding has aged me horribly,_" she said. He could hear the teasing in her voice now.

"But I thought that you wanted the wedding to be perfect." Inviting his fiancee to join him in drinking and having them both turn up with massive hangovers missed the perfect wedding by a long shot.

"_Is that why you went out to drink?_"

"Kind of." Kukai glared at Ikuto who was silently laughing at his discomfort.

"_So you would get a hangover during the wedding?_"

"No! It was... I was..."

"_I bet I could drink you under the table._" There was a small pause as the statement sunk in.

"Oh really?" Kukai started to grin. "Is that a challenge, Idol-san?"

"_You're pretty quick, boy._"

"It's a date," he affirmed. How he loved his woman and all her little quirks.

"_Maybe we can try it on our honeymoon. See you tomorrow... Kukai-koi_."

Kukai glanced at Ikuto, his cheeks flushing red. "Bye... Utau-koi," he said before quickly hanging up so that she didn't hear Ikuto's laughter. It actually startled Kukai. He had never heard him laugh like that before when he wasn't with Amu.

"Utau's picked her man and she isn't likely to let you go," Ikuto said, smirking.

"Hey! How do you know that _she's _not _my _woman?" he asked defensively. Ikuto just gave him a condescending smile and he sighed, reluctantly acknowledging that he was right.

"My sister would never let anybody 'pick' her," said Ikuto.

Kukai sighed. "It's why I love her."

The other man stood up, stretching. "I trust that you can find your own way back home."

"Yeah, I'm pretty much sober now," Kukai informed him. He hesitated for a moment. "Thank you, Tsukiyomi."

"Ikuto."

"What?" Kukai looked at him confused.

"Call me Ikuto," he said, hands shoved in his pockets.

"Okay then," Kukai said awkwardly. "Thank you... Ikuto. It's Kukai," he informed him, smiling.

"See ya later, Kukai." With that, Ikuto strolled away nonchalantly.

For a while, Kukai sat staring at the stars before something hit him. Ikuto was his soon-to-be brother-in-law. Not only that, Ikuto was his _ex-love rival_. He was in love with somebody who had fancied her older brother and had now just become close friends with that said brother/former love interest. Could his life get any weirder?

He groaned. Of course it could; he was marrying Utau 'Hoshina'/Tsukyomi/Souma, wasn't he? What else could he expect?

~*~

**A/N: **This was so fun to write. I hope you had just as much fun reading it!


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